The invention relates to a floor panel in the form of a rectangular plastic plate according to the introductory portion of claim 1.
A floor panel in the form of a rectangular plastic plate with tongue and groove profiling at least at two mutually opposite edges is known from the British patent 1,430,423. In comparison to a conventional tongue and groove connection, the tongue and groove profiling used has the special feature that the tongue and groove can be locked to one another so that adjacent plates can be prevented from drifting apart in the plane in which they are laid. In the present context, a connection of this type is to be referred to as a lockable tongue and groove connection.
Recently, tongue and groove connections have been employed widely in the course of the success of the so-called laminated floor panels. In practice, because of the possibility of locking adjacent panels together in a springy fashion, click connections are also mentioned in practice. The known, relevant patents include the EP 843,763 A1, the EP 1,024,234 A1, the EP 1,036,341 A1 and the EP 698,126 A1.
The known floor panels generally consist of a chipboard core (such as an MDF or an HDF core), which is covered (laminated) with a décor layer and a use surface or a finishing layer.
Laminated floors have proven to be optically appealing, advantageously priced, relatively light and flooring material, which can also be laid by lay persons. Furthermore, they are correspondingly widely spread.
Because of the high proportion of wood material in the laminated panels, it has not been possible until now to appreciably reduce the relatively high impact noise, which emanates from laminated floors.
On the other hand, plastic floor coverings are also known, which generally consist predominantly or completely of PVC and are supplied in the form of individual tiles or panels. These individual tiles or panels are glued to a solid substrate. Admittedly, these plastic floor coverings have advantages in relation to the transfer of impact noise. However, laying the individual panels by gluing them to the substrate continues to be time-consuming and labor intensive. Since dispersion adhesives are generally used for this purpose, bubbles may be formed in the floor covering because of the diffusion of vapors through the adhesive layer or also due to moisture from the substrate.